"IS THIS STUFF TRUE?"

“IS THIS STUFF TRUE?”

            I preached at Hillside Presbyterian Church yesterday as part of “B” team ministers all over the country preaching on the Sunday after Christmas, known as the First Sunday After Christmas.  I used the Epiphany text in Luke 2, where two old people, Anna and Simeon, are struck by lightning when Mary and Joseph bring the baby Jesus to the Temple to be dedicated to God.  Mary and Joseph have also come so that Mary can be cleansed from the “unclean” blood of the birth of Jesus. 

            Jewish law required that women giving birth go through a ritual of purification because all the blood flowing in childbirth has made them unclean.  From a literary point of view, we know that this is at least 33 days after the birth of Jesus, because the law required that.  If Jesus had been a girl (and that would have really changed things, wouldn’t it!), Mary would have had to wait 66 days to come for purification, meaning that the uncleanliness of women was much deeper than the uncleanliness of men.  That same old song of inequity continues to the present day.

            They also come to dedicate Jesus to God, but they do not intend to leave Jesus to be raised in the Temple, as Hannah did with her Samuel (I Samuel 1).   The law requires that they buy a sheep from the Temple and sacrifice it to God there.  That will satisfy the requirement.  Luke’s story tells us that they buy two birds instead, a sign that they are poor and have very little money.  While they are going through this process, lightning strikes two old people who are in the Temple that day:  Anna and Simeon.  Simeon’s story comes first, and he has been waiting to see the Messiah.  He takes the baby Jesus in his arms and blesses him and gives thanks that he has been allowed to see the Messiah: “our eyes have seen Your salvation.”  He has several surprising parts in his prophecy about this baby:  he will offend many people;  he will reveal the hearts of many; and perhaps most surprising of all in this center of Judaism:  this baby will be a light to the Gentiles, to the unclean ones.  He closes out his prophecy with an acknowledgment of the price of this baby’s witness – a sword will pierce the heart of his mother.

            Also in the Temple that day is an aged, widow woman named Anna.  Anna is marginalized in several ways:  she is a woman;  she is old;  she is a widow.  Because she lives at the margins, she is able to see who this baby is, and she begins to tell everybody she meets about this message from God.   Luke’s story lifts her up as the first named evangelist in his Gospel.  The shepherds in the fields precede her in sharing the story of Jesus, but none of them are named.  It is highly unusual for women to be named in the Bible, but here she is:  Anna the evangelist.

            As we stand on the cusp of a new year, rounding out Christmas and heading for 2019, let us remember these two old folks who are the first named people to recognize this revelation from God.  We long for this story to be true – whether the details are exactly like this does not matter as much as the central theme:  at the heart of the universe is the power of love and justice and equity, at the heart of our lives are love and justice and mercy.  Is this true?  Most of us do not experience it as true, so we tend to box up the Christmas story and put it back in the attic, just like we do the decorations.  At best it is a nice diversion from this crazy world.  At worst, it is sentimental slop which we use to sell a lot of products.  And we do live in a crazy and chaotic world!  The stock market seems to be correcting and perhaps collapsing.  The Trump presidency IS collapsing, and we wonder what is next:  will Trump be indicted?  Will he resign?  Will he start a war overseas as a diversion?  Will he encourage a civil war here in order to hold on to the presidency?  We all tremble at these prospects, but we know that something is coming in this year.

            In the midst of this kind of world, we are asked to hear this Christmas story again and keep it with us.  Let us have hearts to see as Simeon did, and let our hearts dance, as did Anna’s, so that we too can share this good news of love and justice and equity.  Let us too be evangelists of this view of the new reality in the world.  I’ll close with my final Howard Thurman poem from his book on Christmas (“The Mood of Christmas”):

“Christmas Is the Season of the Heart”

The Time of Forgiveness for injuries past,

The Sacrament of sharing without balancing the deed,

The Moment of remembrance of graces forgotten,

The Poem of joy making light the spirit,

The Sense of renewal restoring the soul,

The Day of thanksgiving for the goodness of God,

CHRISTMAS IS THE SEASON OF THE HEART.

JOSEPH IS BORN AGAIN

“JOSEPH IS BORN AGAIN”

            This Christmas season is about birth and renewal of life, having gathered around the date of December 25 (in the West) partially because that date was the time of celebrating the beginning of the return of the sun after the winter solstice.  In the Christmas story, a young woman named Mary places herself in great danger by agreeing to become pregnant before marriage by someone other than her fiancé.   Her courageous decision likely would have been nullified, if not for the re-birth of her betrothed Joseph.  As I wrote a couple of months ago in relation to the Kavanaugh hearings and toxic masculinity, Joseph swims in those waters as part of the patriarchal system.

            We can imagine his reaction to the news from Mary that she was pregnant by someone else – and that “someone else” was not human but was God.  “Well, that’s a new one,” is Joseph’s likely reply.  Yet he already indicates that he is not totally immersed in patriarchy, because as Matthew’s Gospel tells us, he is not insisting on taking her before the elders to have her stoned to death.  He will break off the engagement quietly and send her back to her father’s house – who knows what will happen next – the streets for Mary?  Though he is not as toxic as other males might be, he still has male supremacy at his core.  Instead of the direct death penalty, he will give Mary the “slow” death penalty – rejection, isolation, disgrace, poverty, selling her body for economic survival, life on the streets.

            Matthew’s gospel tells us of a new birth for Joseph, however.   In Matthew’s genealogy that begins the Gospel, we see feisty and boundary-breaking women listed in the genealogy of Jesus.  It’s stunning that Matthew lists women at all in the genealogy – it is perhaps more stunning that he does not list the accepted matriarchs like Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel and Leah.  Rather he lists outliers like Tamar, who uses her skills to navigate the oppressive patriarchy (Genesis 38), and Rahab, the enterprising Gentile businesswoman surviving in the outpost of Jericho (Joshua 2).  He also lists another foreign immigrant, Ruth, who becomes the great-grandmother of the beloved king David – almost as if the author of Ruth is speaking to President Trump from many generations ago.

            Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Joseph is born again, into this circle of equity and justice rather than patriarchy.  In a vision from God, he hears that he is to adopt this baby-to-be as his own and is to affirm Mary and the baby.  He also is to give them his protection of being male in a patriarchy.  He is asked to step out of the center of patriarchal life and move to the margins with his pregnant-out-of-wedlock fiancé and with the baby who is to be born.  Joseph agrees – he is born again, and it rocks his life.  Luke’s Gospel tells us that the Roman government forces him and his family to make the long and dangerous trip to Bethlehem.   There his baby will be born on the streets, on the margins of life.   Matthew tells us that the predecessor of Donald Trump - King Herod as he is known – sends soldiers to Bethlehem to kill the baby, but Joseph has already taken his family and fled to Egypt.   Never mind, says King Herod – kill all the boys of Bethlehem – no one defies him!  We can only wonder where we all would be if Egypt had made the Holy Family wait at the border of Israel, while seeking asylum.

            In this scary time in our land, let us recall that Joseph was born again, through a new vision from God.  We don’t know how many visions God had sent Joseph prior to this, but at least one got through to Joseph.  In response, he re-oriented himself and softened his heart from the meanness and oppression of the patriarchy in which he lived.  In this Christmas season, let us pray that God will continue to send us visions, and that we will receive them and find new birth ourselves.  May you and your loved ones know the love and justice that is inherent in this Christmas story.  Here’s another poem from Howard Thurman to describe what that new birth looks like.

“The Sacrament of Christmas”

I make an act of faith toward all {humanity},

            Where doubts would linger and suspicions brood.

I make an act of joy toward all sad hearts,

            Where laughter pales and tears abound.

I make an act of strength toward feeble things,

            Where life grows dim and death draws near.

I make an act of trust toward all of life,

            Where fears preside and distrusts keep watch.

I make an act of love toward friend and foe,

            Where trust is weak and hate burns bright.

I make a deed to God of all my days-----

            And look out on life with quiet eyes.

"BIRTHING THE NEW VISION"

“BIRTHING THE NEW VISION”

            Oh, God, how contrary

            You chose Mary

            My feeble attempt at a haiku brings forth the shock and irritation and astonishment of the birth story of Jesus the Christ.  The heart of the Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke and John is that God has come among us as a human being, as a baby nonetheless, dependent upon us to nurture this vision of what has come to be known as the Incarnation.  God chose as Her vehicle for revelation a peasant girl, engaged to be married, rooted deeply in the system of patriarchy.  God asks Mary to become pregnant without intercourse with males, and if she says “yes,” she will face the death penalty, as a teenager pregnant before marriage.  From the beginning, God is telling us that this new vision will be different – it will be focused on the margins of life, not the center of life. 

            Mary seems to understand this too.  After she says “yes,” she announces the new vision in her “Magnificat,” indicating that in her saying “yes,” and in Joseph’s saying “yes,” the vision will come anew.  Her song of praise (found in Luke 1:46-55) announces that in the Incarnation, God is continuing to do what She has been doing: regarding those on the margins, scattering the proud and mighty, exalting those on the bottom, feeding the hungry, sending the rich to the ash heaps of the margins.  In the birthing of this new vision, Mary announces that the world is about to turn. 

            In the Christmas season, we have so sentimentalized the whole story and glorified Mary as a genderless holy woman, and in so doing we have missed the point of the story.  It is certainly about a woman on the margins of life, devoted to God.  It is certainly about a woman wiling to put herself in harm’s way.  Yet, it is mostly about the contrary nature of God – She reveals Herself in unexpected and irritating ways.  Birthing the new vision is a labor of love.

            Mary brings to mind Fannie Lou Hamer, who was born in 1917 as the youngest of 20 children to a sharecropping family in Mississippi.  She began working in the fields at age 6 and dropped out of school at age 12 to support her family.  In Sunflower County, Mississippi, about 80 miles from where I grew up in Arkansas, she was married and working as a sharecropper in 1962 when the angel SNCC appeared to her to ask her if she would allow a new vision of equity and equality to be born in her.  She had been sterilized without her permission, but the angel got through to her birth-giving spirit.  She said “yes,” and though she did not officially suffer the death penalty, she was arrested and beaten because she began to register people to vote.  Her song, which magnified the Lord, was entitled “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”  Her vision gave birth to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended (for the moment) neo-slavery in the South.  Like Mary’s vision, her vision is still unfolding and has many ups and downs.  Fannie Lou Hamer, the modern Mary, did not receive the death penalty in one day, but she received it more slowly – her deteriorating health because of her lack of adequate health care, finally took her life at age 60 in 1977.

            As we gather around this Christmas story once more, let us not get lost or distracted by the sentimentality that often belies this season.  Let us not get diverted by the call of the products to give us meaning.  Let us remember the contrariness of God in the visions that She gave to Mary of Nazareth and to Fannie Lou Hamer of Mississippi.  And let us try to find those visions.  As we do, let us seek to be guided by a much better poet than me, Howard Thurman, in his poem “The Work of Christmas:”

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

            To find the lost,

            To heal the broken,

            To feed the hungry,

            To release the prisoner,

            To rebuild the nations,

            To bring peace among {siblings},

            To make music in the heart.

"JUSTICE AND LOVE IN THE CHRISTMAS STORY"

‘JUSTICE AND LOVE IN THE CHRISTMAS STORY”

            The Gospels have three versions of the Christmas stories.  Mark, the earliest written Gospel, doesn’t seem to consider the birth story important, so he (or she) doesn’t mention it.  Matthew and Luke have the traditional ones that we know, the ones that get blended together in the Christmas narrative.   John’s Gospel flies off into high and powerful theological atmosphere in his version of the birth story:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…..and the Word became flesh and moved to our neighborhood” (to paraphrase Eugene Petersen’s and Fred Rogers’ translations).

            Matthew and Luke want to hunker down more in the muck of human life, rather than stay up in the rareified theological atmosphere of John.  Matthew begins his birth story in Chapter 1 with a genealogy of Joseph and Jesus, and as I mentioned a few weeks ago, Matthew makes a huge break with tradition and includes women in his genealogy – and, oh, the women whom he names:  Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah (Bathsheba), and Mary.   All five of these women are at the margins, and I’ll address that more next week when we take up Mary’s story.

            Luke begins his version not with the birth of Jesus but with the birth of John the Baptizer.   John the Baptizer is born to a couple who are older, and who have no children.  As usual in the patriarchal style of the Bible, the woman named Elizabeth is blamed for the lack of children – Luke’s story tells us that she is barren.  The father-to-be is a priest named Zechariah.  John’s conception is announced in dramatic fashion.  Zechariah is a priest, and he has a rare opportunity to lead worship in the Temple.  While he is preparing to lead worship, the angel Gabriel appears to him and tells him that he will have a son.  Zechariah indicates that this is not possible, given their biological circumstances.  Gabriel replies by taking Zechariah’s voice away – so much for leading worship!  

            John is later born to Elizabeth and Zechariah, and he grows up to be prophetic ball of fire and preparer of the way of the Lord.  John has his own distinct identity, though, and he challenges the religious powers by inviting people to come to be baptized in the Jordan River, in order to be reconciled to God.  The Temple and synagogues are where such activity usually takes place, so John’s new way is a direct challenge to the religious establishment.  John doesn’t just stick with individual spirituality – he challenges those who would follow his way to seek to do justice.  When they ask John what they can do to be saved, he replies in Luke 3 that they should share their food, share their clothing, and shun corruption. 

            John remained a strong voice for justice.  He later baptizes Jesus, believing that Jesus is the One.   John is later arrested for challenging the authority of the ruler of Judea, and he believes that his arrest will trigger the revolution.  But, nothing seems to be happening.  He sends messengers to Jesus asking him “Are you the One, or should we look for someone else?”  Jesus replies that he is doing what he is supposed to do, and his answer points to the tension between John and Jesus.  It is a tension that is often posed as the tension between justice and love.  John burns for justice;  Jesus burns for love.  While this is a bit simplistic, it does capture the ongoing tensions between love and justice.  Can  love be genuine without  justice?  That is a tension that exists between John and Jesus and a tension that flows throughout human history.  As Christians, especially in the Christmas season, we often tend to move towards a sentimentalized version of love, a love without consequences or challenges to our views of the world.   John the Baptizer challenges that view, reminding us that justice is what love looks like in public, as Cornel West once put it.

            The tensions between John and Jesus often remind me of the tensions between Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X.  As James Cone put it so well in his fine book on them (“Martin and Malcolm and America’), King started with love and moved towards an emphasis on justice, while Malcolm started with justice and moved towards love.  Whatever their differences, they were both assassinated because they were black men standing up for love and justice.  And, whatever the differences between John and Jesus, they were both executed by the state for their emphasis on love and justice.  In our individualistic culture, we much prefer a softer version of love that has no reference to justice, and that tendency comes out no more clearly than in the Christmas season.  Here’s one of Howard Thurman’s poems on that, entitled “Christmas Is Waiting to Be Born:”

When refugees seek deliverance that never comes,

And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,

Where little children age before their time,

And life wears down the edges of the mind,

Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,

While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,

Where fear companions each day’s life,

And Perfect Love seems long delayed,

CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN:

In you, in me, in all [mankind}.

"WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS"

“WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS”

            Yesterday was the 159^th anniversary of the execution of John Brown in 1859 in what is now Charles Town, West Virginia, an event that led quickly to the Civil War.  Saturday was the 63^rd anniversary of the Rosa Parks’ sit-down on the bus in 1955, an event that joined with the Brown V. Board SCOTUS decision and the lynching of Emmett Till to ignite the modern civil rights movement.  Now we are in a time when much of the gains recognized from those events seem to be in doubt.  It is a crisis in the most profound root of that word in Greek:  a time of great danger, but also a time of great opportunity.

            In the midst of this time of crisis, I think that it is time for Christmas.  To borrow from the commercial song, “we need a little Christmas.”  That song was written by Jerry Herman and debuted by Angela Lansbury in the 1966 Broadway play “Mame.”  The song came in the play in response to the stock market crash of  1929, and it was an attempt to recover the spirit of hope and love.  Of course, nowadays, we probably would sing: “we have way too much of Christmas,” since the stores start advertising it in September.   The Christmas that I need is not the commercialized, sentimental, capitalist, Santa Claus kind.  The Christmas that I need is the loving, enduring, courageous kind seen in the biblical witness – the kind that happened at the margins of life.

            During this season, I’ll be looking at some of the narratives of the Christmas story in the Bible, but we should be noting that the story itself is an invitation into our deeper selves as individuals and as a culture.  It asks us to consider that at the heart of our lives is not the evil or even tragedy that we all experience in our human journeys but rather a sense of love and even justice.   In Christmas we proclaim that the God who is the center of all things, this God has come into our midst and has proclaimed solidarity with us.  This Incarnation, as it came to be known, did not occur in the halls of power.   No appearance at the Christmas parade, no edict from the Roman emperor, no conquering general riding into town on a horse or a tank, no address at a joint session of Congress, no stock market bull run, no celebrity with the cameras flashing and the spotlights heralding.

            Rather, this Incarnation came at the margins of life, where oppressed people try to cross borders, where pregnant teen-agers wonder how they will survive, where women build community for themselves, where children are born on the streets, where males wrestle with sharing power, where emperors order populations to be on the move – places where vulnerability is evident and where courage endurance are called out.   In this story are the themes of home and longing and memory and love.   Why did God choose to appear this way?  Why become so dependent and vulnerable to us, to come among us as a little baby?  Why depend on the human beings who prefer money and weapons and race and sexism to the saving values of love and equity and justice?  Here’s a clue that we’ll be exploring in this season:  this story is not about bright lights and presents and trees and selling products, although I like most of those.  From its beginning, this story has asked us to look beneath the surface of our lives, both our individual lives and our cultural lives, to look for the values that sustain us and give us life.

            So, in this season of great discontent and crisis and danger, we do need a little Christmas.  I’m hoping that in my own life, I’ll find the Christmas story as it was meant to be: an invitation into our own lives as children of God.  And, I’m hoping that you’ll find that too.  I’ll be using the poetry of Howard Thurman during this season, from his book “The Mood of Christmas.”  Here’s one entitled: “At Christmastime:”

            The tides flow out from the Inner Sea

            At Christmastime:

            They find their way to many shores

            With gifts of remembrance, thoughts of love---

            Though the world be weary and the days afraid

            The heart renews its life and the mind takes hope

            From the tides that flow from the Inner Sea

            At Christmastime.